Courts Seek Big Raise For Judges

The state courts system is recommending that judges get a pay raise of up to 62 percent after having their pay frozen since 1999.

The recommendations come in a report from chief administrative judge Ann Pfau to the state Commission on Judicial Compensation, which is evaluating the pay for the state’s roughly 1,300 judges.

State Supreme Court judges receive a salary of $136,700, but Pfau recommended judges’ salaries increase to as high as $220,836 to put them on par with other states, based on cost of living standards. She recommended a salary between $192,000 and nearly $221,000.

Pfra called the recommendations “prudent and responsible.”

“After such a lengthy pay freeze, the cost of the reform of past practices must not prevent this commission from fulfilling its urgent mandate to provide appropriate compensation to New York’s judges,” she wrote in the report.

The seven-member panel is expected to release its findings in late August. The commission’s recommendations will automatically become law unless state lawmakers try to halt them.